Melanotic schwannoma of thoracic spinal root mimics metastatic melanoma: a potential pitfall for misdiagnosis.

Melanotic Schwannoma (MS) is a kind of rare subtypes of Schwannoma. In this tumor, amounts of melanin always mislead inexperienced pathologists to a diagnosis of primary or metastastic melanoma. Different from the ordinary Schwannoma, MS is considered as a low malignant nerve sheave tumor. Here we present a case of MS arising from the thoracic spinal and initially was misdiagnosed as metastastic melanoma. But the patient followed a benign course, without recurrent in 30 months follow-up.